128 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING. 



spring. Being solitary in habit, and of a roving, restless 

 disposition, this grouse may be found in many regions 

 the opposite of each other in character, but its favorite 

 haunts are vrooded mountains having an altitude varying 

 from one to six thousand feet. It makes its winter home 

 among the highest trees in districts where snow falls 

 heavily, and there it lives secure from all dangers, except 

 the lightning or the tempest. 



It is found in all the wooded regions from the Eocky 

 Mountains to the Cascade and Sierra Nevada ranges. It 

 mingles with the ruffed grouse m some places, for both 

 species are much alike in taste and habits. It does not 

 " pack," as its prairie congeners do; hence, it is a rare 

 occurrence to find more than ten or a dozen together 

 after the families break up in the autumn. Single birds 

 are met with in winter oftener than packs, esijecially if 

 they have been shot at much; yet I have seen a group 

 of twelve in the month of December. They are wilder 

 in winter than at any other time, but they will even then 

 allow a man to come within easy shooting range before 

 they attempt to flee. If they become alarmed when they 

 are on the ground, they squat as closely as they can, 

 stretch out their necks, and peer vigilantly about; and 

 if they are flushed, they rise with a loud whirr, and, with 

 a few rapid, powerful strokes of the wing, find refuge in 

 some towering conifer. 



A person may fire at them in a tree a dozen times 

 without eliciting a note or a movement from them, for 

 they stand the leaden hail that falls about them with 

 greater indifference than the coolest veteran that ever 

 entered a battle field. If one is wounded, however, it 

 will attempt to fly, and this is likely to cause the whole 

 pack to dart away, but they may not go more than two 

 or three hundred yards before they alight again. It is 

 nothing unusual to meet twenty or thirty families in a 

 dq-y's walk in sorne of the regions beyond the Rocky 



